Episode description

Right now I'm reading a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Japanese organizing expert Marie Kondo.

It's amazing. I can't recommend it enough. Already, I'm feeling an increase in lightness, beauty, and joy in my home. But that wasn't the reason I started reading it to Alex during one of our Skype calls last week. Nope, I shared it with him because of a deeper truth, and its masterful presentation.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up isn't just about tidy homes, it's about life.

The book itself is so good because it throws out every traditional piece of advice. Marie proves it: Little by little won't solve the problem. Storage won't fix the problem. Fancy boxes and shelves and "one thing a day" won't get you there, ever.

You have to do something radically different to get a radically different result.

Most startup advice is on the day-to-day level: the little tactics. Try this, try that. Pivot. Split-test. But like tidying, the problem occurs upstream. These tactics will never fix the broken strategy.

The lessons from this book? Virtually the same lessons we have learned ourselves in business, and what we do our damnedest to teach our students. The previous failures, the negative self-talk, the self-perpetuating cycle, the backsliding that terrifies our students… it's all exactly the same as Marie describes in her students. Only the implementation details change.

Sound at all familiar? It sure sounded familiar to me.

Listen to part one of our 2-part conversation to learn the revolutionary approach Marie teaches for tidying, and how those lessons apply to your startup, too. Bonus: life (and business) wisdom from ancient Chinese philosophers, 500-year-old French noblemen, and the Bible.

-Amy

• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up on Amazon
• Why running a consultancy doesn't prepare you for building products
• Amy's 500-years-ago essayist doppelganger, Michel de Montaigne
• The 7 steps to failure - How do you create a product that people want to buy?

This recording originally appeared at: https://unicornfree.com/2015/what-a-japanese-organizing-expert-can-teach-you-about-your-startup

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